Westmalle Triple Beer, 6x330ml

Product Information

Classic, balanced, and perfectly brewed, St. Bernardus Tripel is bright golden with a puffy, dense head. All the fruity and spicy yeast notes you’d expect are intertwined with a light floral hoppiness. At 8% ABV, it’s svelte for a Tripel, with a quaffing drinkability.

Belgian Tripel is a luxurious and festive style. Given its high alcohol percentage, it’s meant to be savored and appreciated. Whether you’re celebrating an anniversary, birthday, holiday, or just having a nice meal, Tripel is a go-to style to compliment joyous times. The word ‘ tripel’ makes reference to the fact that ingredients are used in quantities larger than usual. It is a strong, predominantly blond beer with a strong taste of malts and/or hop bitters. You can tell the Westmalle Tripel from the Dubbel by its label, which looks antique and yellowed, and the bottle cap in the same colour stamped with the brewery’s initials. This beer was considered to be very strong, especially in comparison with what else was being brewed around that time. The Westmalle Tripel continued to build on its characteristically strong and refined character, by using only natural ingredients in the brewing process – such as real hop flowers from Eastern Europe – and the highest quality barley malt. Tasters included professional beer writers, brewery owners, professional brewmasters and beer reps. Awesome, Paste-branded glassware is from Spiegelau.In 1865 the monks of Westmalle started brewing a dark Trappist beer in addition to their table beer. They adjusted the recipe in 1926, doubling the amounts of raw ingredients to produce a new, stronger beer. Dubbel is a logical name for this doubled beer, though it is more often simply called ‘Trappist’. To this day, the 1926 recipe is the basis for Westmalle Dubbel.

Though strong Belgian pale ales have existed for centuries, the “tripel” name wasn’t used until the Trappist monks at Westmalle Abbey changed the name of what they’d called Superbier, their heaviest pale ale, in 1956. Tripel is thought to denote the strength of the beer, though dubbels and quads are entirely different styles of dark beer. Their foresight was impressive: The beer itself is, today, perfectly au courant. Its deep golden body is offset by a snowy white head, fed by a cascade of bubbles that flash and dance to the surface. Notably, it has hops in the nose—they’re lightly herbal—along with honey and esters of pear and banana. Hop oils collect on the bubbles in the foam, and they arrive first in the mouth. This is unusual; most Belgian beers have little or no evident hopping, but Westmalle Tripel is stiffened with a fairly stout dose. “The bitterness is very important, which is around 38 to 40 [international bittering units],” says Adriaensens. He prefers to think of the beer as “hoppy” rather than bitter, and he uses a blend of six varieties of hops. Even in this, the abbey seems to have anticipated the direction beer would ultimately go. Highly carbonated, with distinctive notes of spice, banana, and candied sugar, Tripels range between 8 to 12% ABV. They remain deceptively drinkable, despite this elevated alcohol content. A light and very smooth body carry notes of bready and sweet malts blended with spicy, European hops. Specially selected yeast drives the flavor profile. Distinct esters and phenols create fruity and light clove-like aromatics.

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A traditional decoction mash is used to produce a highly fermentable wort with a beautiful, deep golden color. For homebrewers using well-modified malts, this isn’t necessary. The verdict: Chalk it up, that’s two from Huntsville, a city I’ve previously written an in-depth beer guide for, if you ever happen to be visiting. Oddly enough, every taster present on this day of tasting gave this beer the exact same score, although they all enjoyed slightly different aspects of it. Miracle Worker has an excellent malt profile with great complexity; funny, considering that the description makes it sound like solely pilsner malt. One would think there was at least a decent amount of wheat in there, as the beer conveys some pleasantly grainy, bready characteristics before segueing into subtle spice and floral/herbal hops. Regardless, it was enough for one taster to consider it “ON POINT.” It could be considered a good example of an “Americanized” Belgian tripel, considering that it still uses a Belgian yeast strain, but produces a much cleaner, brighter beer than the Belgian-made tripels tend to be, with an emphasis on drinkability rather than richness.